Life Is Like a Fast Car

By Scott Patrick Erwin

This book was inspired by a 3,900-mile trip taken with my Father in the spring of 2018. My father has always been “a car guy.” He bought his first one at fourteen, then proceeded to drive it following his parents as they returned home to Kansas after a decade in California where his parents had settled during the “Okie” Migration of the Great Depression.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Patrick Erwin
• Release date: Nov 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781801280198

Scott Patrick Erwin

Scott Patrick Erwin is a writer and observer of life who is inspired by the life lessons available through seemingly ordinary activities. His ambition is to help others observe those lessons, learn from them, and grow through them to achieve their ambitions in life. He is the author of the Blog, Vlog, and Podcast Life is Like Us. (www.lifeislike.us) and the book Life is a Ballet. He is a former financial professional and business school graduate of Pepperdine University and California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.

Book preview

Dedication

To my Dad,

Donald D. Erwin

and all the cars.

Acknowledgment

I want to acknowledge my father and his editorial assistance. I also want to thank him for purchasing a beautiful ruby red 2018 Ford Mustang GT for himself on his 85th birthday and letting me join him on a 3,900-mile cross country journey back to his hometown in Kansas. Without that trip, the inspiration for this book may not have happened.

About the Author

Scott Patrick Erwin is a writer, performer, and observer of life who is inspired by the life lessons available through seemingly ordinary activities. His ambition is to help others observe those lessons, learn from them, and grow to achieve their goals in life.

Scott was born and raised in Central California. He is a business school graduate of California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo (BS) and Pepperdine University (MBA).

Preface

This book was inspired by a 3,900-mile trip taken with my Father in the spring of 2018. My father has always been a car guy. He bought his first one at fourteen, then proceeded to drive it following his parents as they returned home to Kansas after a decade in California where his parents had settled during the Okie Migration of the Great Depression.

On the occasion of his 85th birthday, he told me he was going to buy himself a brand-new Ford Mustang GT. With the new car purchased, he began planning a trip back to his hometown in Kansas from Central California where he lived most of his adult life and had retired. We had a great time traveling The Mother Road, the term used for Route 66 by many of the Okie migrants of the 1930’s Dust Bowl era. We visited family, saw his old home outside of Neodesha, Kansas, stopped by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house on the prairie just a few miles from there, and enjoyed miles and miles of open road with the 460 horsepower in the Mustang GT. It was a wonderful trip.

The book that follows is the largely a result of that trip. The perspectives are written as observations about life. I have tried to keep them as brief and clear as possible to make them an interesting read. I hope that you enjoy them, and they inspire you to consider some of the life lessons that you can have while driving a fast car.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgment

About the Author

Preface

Introduction

Perspective 1- Slow Down to Speed Up

Perspective 2- Speed Up to Slow Down

Perspective 3- Making Quick Decisions

Perspective 4- Sometimes You Have to Get in, Sit Down, Shut Up, and Enjoy the Ride

Perspective 5- Take the Risk!

Perspective 6- You Have to Push Yourself Beyond Your Comfortable Speed to Grow

Perspective 7- Look for the Opening

Perspective 8- It is Always Nice to Drive a Nice Car. You Get to Live, Pick a Good Life.

Perspective 9- Take Care of the Car

Perspective 10- Rides are Always Better with Family and Friends

Perspective 11- Something in Motion Tends to Stay in Motion

Perspective 12- Speed Limits

Perspective 13- It is Good to Hold the Wheel

Perspective 14- Feed the Beast. Accept the Cost

Perspective 15- Value the Vehicle. You Only Have One

Perspective 16- Always be Looking for the Next Car. Trade-up in Life Mentally

Perspective 17- Fast Cars Are Better with Music

Perspective 18- Getting Stuck in Traffic Sucks

Perspective 19- Change Lanes

Perspective 20- Trust the Car. It was Built for Driving

Perspective 21- Use Your Turn Signals - Communicate

Perspective 22- When the Storms Come, Use the Wipers

Perspective 23- Check your systems and observe the warning signs

Perspective 24- Speed Limits are there for a reason. Observe the rules but know that occasionally you will need to break them

Perspective 25- The accelerator should be explored once in a while

Perspective 26- Set the cruise control once in a while

Perspective 27- Autopilot/Driver Assistance

Perspective 28- It is not the paint job, but what is under the hood that matters

Perspective 29- Not everyone is going to like your car

Perspective 30- Sometimes the car crashes

Perspective 31- Near misses

Perspective 32- Don’t drive drunk

Perspective 33- Take the route less traveled

Perspective 34- When in doubt, go right

Perspective 35- Lay some rubber

Perspective 36- Road signs

Perspective 37- Breakdowns happen

Perspective 38- Respect the car, use its power wisely

Perspective 39- Stay within the lines

Perspective 40- When it is dark, use the High beams

Perspective 41- Learning to drive takes patience

Perspective 42- Corners

Perspective 43- Contemplation

Perspective 44- Forgive yourself

Perspective 45- Lights and Sirens

Perspective 46- Breathe

Perspective 47- Release the tension

Perspective 48- Sliding

Perspective 49- Compass

Perspective 50- Down shift

Perspective 51- Help those broken down

Perspective 52- Test yourself

Perspective 53- Fast cars are not practical

Perspective 54- Wash the car

Perspective 55- Forget the road behind.

Perspective 56- Driving a fast car requires a little madness

Perspective 57- Race to the end

Perspective 58- The end of the ride eventually comes

Perspective 59- Expect resistance

Perspective 60- Find your racing tribe

Perspective 61- Focus on the finish line Keep going.

Perspective 62- Once you have gone fast, it's hard to settle for less

Perspective 63- Face the fear!

Perspective 64- Road trips are an adventure

Perspective 65- It takes confidence, not arrogance

Perspective 66- Nobody else is driving your car

Perspective 67- We all have a different set of skills

Perspective 68- Any moment in a fast car is a dangerous situation. So is life.

Perspective 69- Win Baby

Perspective 70- Don’t quit

Perspective 71- Persistence

Perspective 72- The fastest driver is the one everyone is gunning for

Perspective 73- Fast cars can be a spiritual experience

Perspective 74- Driving a fast car, like life, is close to the edge, but still on the road

Perspective 75- Keep dreaming about the next car

Perspective 76- Sometimes the drive leads to inspiration

Perspective 77- Not every ride is going to make sense

Perspective 78- Improve your driving ability

Perspective 79- Find the road you want to drive

Perspective 80- Disappointment

Perspective 81- Drive the car that you want

Perspective 82- Murphy’s Law

Perspective 83- Find the car you need to drive.

Perspective 84- Anger is a distraction

Perspective 85- The only way to learn to drive, is to drive

Perspective 86- Visualize the road ahead

Perspective 87- Don’t look back, you are not going that way

Perspective 88- Pick your destination. Have an ambition.

Perspective 89- Coodiwomple

Perspective 90- Listen to the car. Trust your intuition.

Perspective 91- Fill your tank

Perspective 92- Brakes

Perspective 93- Keys

Conclusion Hitting the road

Page Left Blank Intentionally

Introduction

Life is like a fast car. In order to navigate a fast car at a high speed successfully, you must tune in with your conscious mind and use that focused mind to train your unconscious mind to perform at a higher level. Only when we are focused on the present moment and the actions required in it are we driving our life at its full potential. You must focus, assess, make decisions, take actions, and assess the results for any changes needed, and then F#@KING PUNCH IT!

- Scott Patrick Erwin

If we really think about the process of driving, the subconscious mind does most of the work – in the act of driving. Think about it. I mean really think about it. The seamless shifting of gears, the slight press of the accelerator, the anticipation of a curve in the road up ahead, all of this and more is analyzed by the subconscious mind. We are propelling ourselves down the road in a small metal box at terminal speeds while we are consciously thinking about everything else but the act of driving.

I am no expert on the matter, but I have heard it say that about 95% of the time while we are driving, we are consciously thinking about something else. This ‘something else’ could be anything... the talk you had with your spouse in the morning before heading out the door, the music on the radio, the workday ahead, the grocery list, the next red light, or the car ahead of you moving at the speed of a snail in the fast lane.

In a way, if you really think about it, driving happens while you are doing something else. So, why do we trust cars and our driving so much? The car is being driven by the unconscious mind...a mind thinking about everything else BUT the stretch of road ahead. Why? The answer is simple...because the unconscious mind already does most of the work in life, so it is the same when we are driving!

The vast majority of our actions in life are, in a manner of speaking, unconscious. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense if you think about it...do you have to make a conscious decision to get your heart beating? Or your kidneys to filter our bodies, or your stomach to digest food? No! Most of the time, we do not even consciously breathe, although now you will probably spend the next few seconds very consciously remembering to breathe. Got you?

L.J.K. Setright, the great English motoring journalist and author once wrote that he would occasionally drive with his feet crossed on the pedals, operating the accelerator with his left foot and the brake with his right. This was done to ensure that his driving was an act of conscious behavior. Judging from this, we come to the truth of the matter which is we depend on certain actions to be unconscious when we drive. If you spent conscious time thinking about every single motion performed with your feet and hands behind the wheel, you would be effectively indistinguishable from a student taking a driver’s education class.

So how can we be in the moment instead of thinking of everything else BUT the joy of driving? Think back to the first time you drove an automobile, every motion performed was fully conscious, arrived at after some thought and consideration. Think of the feeling and of how dangerous your first drive felt! The act of driving is the same as living life every day.

The best racing drivers perform at the absolute limit almost unconsciously, so that their conscious mental horsepower can be devoted to planning and overtaking the other racers while at the same time devising a race strategy. It was common for Michael Schumacher, seven-time Formula One Champion, to chat about the position and current lap time of various drivers racing around the circuit even as he himself was running at a qualifying pace!

How was this possible? Well for Schumacher, the process of driving at the limit had become so automatic, effectively an unconscious action, that he was able to treat